RESISTANCE AND NEW IMAGINARIES

This section focuses on the varied ways in which Puerto Ricans, on the Island and abroad, have been challenging the Fiscal Oversight Board and the policies of austerity. For example, citizens have organized themselves independently to protest the first scheduled conference of the Board for the Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act. However, there are also various newly-formed activist groups, such as Campamento Contra la Junta, #SeAcabaronLasPromesas, and Frente Ciudadano por la Auditroía de la Deuda. One subsection refers to this last group’s dedication to accomplishing a citizen-led debt audit, their protests, and their confrontations with the police. The University of Puerto Rico, a historically powerful source of protest, is particularly vulnerable to austerity measures since most of its funding comes from the government. The Fiscal Oversight Board’s threats of drastically reducing the university’s budget propelled the students into a two-month strike. Another subsection surveys the students’ demands and negotiations, their role in the general political struggle on the Island, and the way in which their tactics provoked criticism from other students and from different sectors of society. Outside the Island, The Puerto Rico Diaspora Summit, which has its own subsection, brought academics, politicians, and activists together to organize the Diaspora and find solutions to the Island’s economic struggles. Although artists are involved in many of these groups, one subsection focuses specifically on how they have used their craft to underscore the experiences and crises Puerto Ricans endure and to challenge the colonial relationship between the Island and the US.